As I currently see events, a self-directed life and the freedom to live such a life is a blessing of the Enlightenment, indeed, but much Enlightenment thinking has also helped produce many Shrines-Of-The-Self which currently dot the landscape, and which come with many downside risks.

Reserving judgment about such Shrines (should they exist), I suspect many in the West feel a tidal pull towards Romanticized-Modernized-Postmodernized visions of Nature, and the triumph of the individual artist, revealing and having revelations, creating, striving, and making anew in a process of casting old models aside. Towering genuises abound. Many are European.

Generations and centuries later, however, such ideas have also saturated Western civil society enough to create many of our familiar tensions: Some individuals are in a process of fully rejecting religion, science, mathematics and many products of reason in favor of modern mysticism, ideology and the nihilist denial of objective reality.

I think other individuals in the modern world have placed a lot of hope and meaning into political ideals and political movements gathered around what I’ve been calling the ‘-Isms’ (feminism, environmentalism, racism etc…where group identity can easily crowd out the pursuit of truth and individual autonomy). Such movements have important moral truths to offer and arguably freedoms for all (such is always the claim), but they don’t come without costs, dangers and downsides either (spin-cycles of utopia/dystopia as Eric Weinstein points out in the video above).

I consider these movements to be in serious need of critique, resistance and context, especially in dealing with hard problems of human nature like war and conflict, potential evil, and the incredible difficulty of maintaining legitimate moral decency aligned with positions of authority. Process can often matter as much as outcome.

Last but not least, still other individuals have been taken up into radical movements staying true to the totalitarianism and misery guaranteed within doctrines of revolutionary praxis, and such individuals are still busy activating beneath the deeper bedrock of secular humanism and liberal thinking, pushing upwards.

The Weinsteins are engaged in a lot of the pushback:

That mathematics, the natural sciences and evolutionary biology offer profound truth and knowledge should go without saying, expanding human understanding of the natural world, more accurately explaining empirically observed patterns and relationships within that natural world, and actively disrupting most old models many of us have long since internalized.

This is what free and rigorous thinking, often at great personal cost, can offer to an open and free society. May it long continue.

I don’t know if I’m with the brothers Weinstein when it comes to their radicalism regarding all current institutional arrangements, but I could be persuaded by their ‘panther-in-the-china-shop’ model of reform. Frankly, many of our most important institutions are proving over-inflated, cumbersome, and full of rot: Buffeted as we all are are by migration and mass communication, global labor markets, and very rapid technological rates of change.

***Perhaps if there’s a spectrum of change, I fall more on the conservative side. At the moment, I’m skeptical of the defense of experts and expertise (despite the truths), the panther-reformers (despite our common interests), and the populist discontent so active in our politics right now (boiling over, but accurately, I think, representing many of the fissures and chasms in civil society right now).

I should add that I think much that’s being conserved is arguably not worth conserving at any given time, but I doubt any one of us, nor any group, has accesss to full knowledge of what should stay and what should go. In fact, I’m pretty certain one of the main points of good governance lies in prohibiting any one of us, nor any particular faction, no matter how reasonable, to have very much power for very long (and it’s definitely the job of good people and the good in people to keep the demagogues, zealots, career bureuacrats and grubby strivers from too much power).

Let me know what I may have gotten wrong. Any thoughts and comments are welcome.

‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’

‘Recognizing the ancient ideas at work in these modern arguments puts those of us committed to America’s parrhesiastic tradition of speaking truth to power in a better position to defend it. It suggests that to defeat the modern proponents of isegoria—and remind the modern parrhesiastes what they are fighting for—one must go beyond the First Amendment to the other, orienting principle of American democracy behind it, namely equality. After all, the genius of the First Amendment lies in bringing isegoria and parrhesia together, by securing the equal right and liberty of citizens not simply to “exercise their reason” but to speak their minds. It does so because the alternative is to allow the powers-that-happen-to-be to grant that liberty as a license to some individuals while denying it to others.’

Further exploration in the video below…:

My brief summary (let me know what I may have gotten wrong): Bejan appeals to two ancient and somewhat conflicting Greek concepts in order to define two types of ‘free speech.’

Isegoria: More associated with reason, argument, and debate. You may feel, believe and think certain things to be true, but you’re a member/citizen of a Republic and you’ve got to martial your arguments and follow the rules (not all people may be members/citizens either, depending on the rules). Many Enlightenment figures (Locke, Kant, Spinoza) appealed to reason more through isegoria according to Bejan (given the tricky course they had to navigate with the existing authority of the time). Think first, speak later.

Parrhesia: More associated with open, honest and frank discussion, and with much less concern as to consequences: ‘Say-it-all’ Socrates was voted to death by the People after all, despite his reasoning prowess. She brings up Diogenes (the lantern guy), who flaunted convention, tooks serious risks and even masturbated publicly. She brings up all the racy stuff even Quakers and various other sects said against each other in the early days of our Republic.

So, why create this particular framework, and why is it necessary to ‘go around’ the 1st amendment upon it in pursuit of Equality?: Perhaps one of Bejan’s aims is to resuscitate an American liberalism which would allow old-school liberals to appeal to young activists and a lot of young people influenced by activists, obliquely routing all back to the Constitution. Only through becoming aware of their own assumptions can liberals better address the ‘hate-speech’ concept (with no Constitutional basis) which has taken root in our universities, for example.

Bejan relies on some data and some anecdotal evidence from her own teaching experience to justify a potential shift in public sentiment, requiring of her approach. Such evidence might line-up with elements of libertarian/conservative critiques of liberalism, too, which tend to focus on liberals lacking a sufficiently profound moral framework to justify why liberals should make and enforce laws, and run our institutions, especially when those institutions are judged by outcomes, not intentions, bound as they are within a Constitutional framework.

So far, I’m not sure I’m persuaded by Bejan’s reasoning, for why not just stick to teaching, promoting and discussing the Constitution? Has Bejan really punched a hole back to the Greeks, or has she fashioned a tool-at-hand to grasp certain products of Enlightenment modernity to address more crises of modernity?

***In the video Bejan mentions, in non-Burkean, non-conservative fashion, our founding documents, the French Revolutionaries, and the U.N. charter as examples of rights-based thinking. Of course, beyond debates about liberalism, there’s quite a lot of dispute about where our rights might come from in the first place (from God, from a Deity, from Nature, from Nature’s Laws, from past Laws and Charters, from knowledge gained through the Natural Sciences, from the latest Social Science, from coalitions of like-minded people, from majorities/pluralities of people, from top-down lists of rights and ideological platforms etc.)

‘I keep hearing about a supposed “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, or statements such as, “This isn’t free speech, it’s hate speech,” or “When does free speech stop and hate speech begin?” But there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. Hateful ideas (whatever exactly that might mean) are just as protected under the First Amendment as other ideas.‘

‘A true devotee of freedom of speech says, ‘Let everyone speak, because it is important that all sides are heard and that the public has the right to use their moral muscles and decide who they trust and who they don’t’. The new, partial campaigners for friends’ speech effectively say, ‘Let my friend speak. She is interesting. She will tell the public what they need to hear.’ These are profoundly different positions, the former built on liberty and humanism, the latter motored by a desire to protect oneself, and oneself alone, from censorship. The former is free speech; the latter ‘me speech.’

Also:

“First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.’

‘Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. ‘

‘Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. ‘

And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.”

Sometimes I find myself wondering how the mission of supporting the arts and experimental literature got mixed-up with such political ideas over at the New Yorker (well-educated readers, aesthetes, writers, cultural critics etc) who seem to be viewing the failures of Venezuela from a very foggy Overton window indeed.

Part of this is due to the institutionalization and white-washing of the activities of many radicals and would-be radicals, revolutionaries and would-be revolutionaries from the late 60’s onwards here in the U.S. Organizations like the Weathermen talked something of a game: Appealing to the injustice of the draft while protesting the Vietnam War and aiming for ‘pure’ majoritarian democracy, but such appeals couldn’t mask the necessity of making criminal political bedfellows, spouting violent rhetoric and even devolving into terrorism and murder in the name of their ideas.

Okay, maybe it’s pretty simple…:

Here’s one senior New Yorker editor, Hendrik Hertzberg, discussing years ago how to abolish the Electoral College, arrive at a National Vote (to better serve the People, of course) and enact ‘democratic change.’

This strikes me as in-line with much Left and Left-liberal majoritarian populism. activism and softly (ultimately hard) radical change.

More on Venezuela:

Thanks to the New Criterion, they’ve recycled an Anthony Daniels (Theodore Dalrymple) review of two books on the subject:

A response to one of my comments found on Alexandria, where I used to blog, on Hugo Chavez:

‘Chavez is actually not an orthodox Marxist in the sense that Marx would have recognized (which was why I linked to the sort of Marxist ‘prophecy’ of people like Chavez from the ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’). Chavez is more along the lines of what traditional Marxists referred to as ‘Bonapartist’ (borrowing from the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte). The whole theory on which Chavez based his political life was that the working class (or what passed for it, in a country like Venezuela) *could not* make a revolution on its own, and that someone else (the military and the Socialist Party, led by him) needed to make the revolution for them. For the very reasons that Bourdieu and Marx hint at in the quotations above. A ‘revolution from above’, in other words.

Where Chavez (and a number of other left-wing Latin American strongmen over the last century) departed radically from orthodox Marxist theory, is that Marx saw Bonapartism as essentially a conservative (thought not a bourgeois) strategy, by which military cliques delude the poor into supporting them, by promising to protect them against the bourgeoisie, and using paternalistic rhetoric. Chavez is, of course, a man of the left, as was his political inspiration, the mid-20th century Peruvian leader General Velasco. Marx seems to have been wrong about ‘revolutions from above’: sometimes they can be genuinely left-wing, and in a lot of cases (including Venezuela) they’re the only serious left-wing option on offer.’

‘The boss loves to talk and has clocked up speeches of Castro-like length. Bolívar is the theme of which he never tires. His early uniformed movement of mutineers—which failed to bring off a military coup in 1992—was named for Bolívar.’

If we’re going to have a chattering class of middlebrow know-nothings, can we at least ask they know the right somethings?:

—————–

It’s a long way out of socialist and revolutionary solidarity, which continually occupies the South American mind. One more revolution: Adam Kirsch takes a look at Mario Vargas Llosa. The Dream Of The Peruvian.

Writers must be familiar in being seized by the uselessness and self-pitying solipsism which can accompany the practice (prose-stylist and/or serious artist I’m not).

Sound and fury, indeed.

Familiar passions stir, animated by some new issue of the day, hardening into place within the grooves of thought.

Frankly, it’d be more useful to address many current political, legal and cultural disputes within the tradition of Western arts & letters. There are reasons why certain works of art have lasted so long and described, with such rich detail, our condition.

Getting all the weeping out over a good book doesn’t sound like a bad place to seek solace.

Alas, in the meantime…

-I was treating the below trend as part of a generalized decline of organized religion in America; some eventual taming of the frontier into more shopworn, European ideological disputes:

Do people in a cohort identified by name really listen to writers giving advice to their cohort?:

Wilkinson:

‘How classical liberalism became weaponized anti-socialism

The history of 20th century libertarian thought comes into focus when you view it as an attempt to preserve the humanitarian blessings of the liberal, capitalist market order against the illiberal depredations of encroaching socialism.

F.A. Hayek saw the Nazis and Soviets up close. In the early 1940s, when Hayek began writing The Road to Serfdom, the Nazis (who ruled his native Austria) were locked in a death-match for control of Europe with Stalin’s totalitarian communism and the scattered remnants of the old liberal order. Capitalist liberal democracy looked like it really might be doomed. Hayek believed that 18th and 19th century arguments for “the liberal creed” had grown stale, no longer inspiring allegiance. So he took it upon himself to restate and defend the argument for liberalism in contemporary terms against the specific threats to freedom in the age of the Soviets and Nazis.’

Speaking of weaponized libertarian anti-socialism-More on Title IX consequences, and the presumption of guilt and subjection to extra-legal authority some individuals have undergone within our universities…caught within a dragnet harming the environment of free-thought: ‘Pursuit of Injustice: Further Adventures Under Title IX:’

‘The tribulations resulting from trumped-up Title IX cases have been well documented by Laura Kipnis, among others. Some of them have spun off into legal proceedings. My experience at the University of Utah shows that Title IX can beget other kinds of administrative tribunals in higher education.

For some, Trump operates as a clever and ambitious used-car salesman, with some victories under his belt, but a used-car salesman nonetheless. He will ultimately be unable to deliver on many of his promises without making too many short-term gains at the expense of long-term freedoms, principle, character and knowledge. Such a man has been summoned by the times, and may not be the worst we see yet.

To other conservative-minded folks, he may be a cruder, politically personalizing populist, yes, but he stands-up for their economic and personal interests, making all the right people uncomfortable in all the right ways by openly waving the flag and focusing on national sovereignty and economic growth (identity politickers, one-worlders, progressives, the media, political and Hollywood elites, liberal political idealists as well as many establishment Republicans and RINO’s are properly either driven into irrational frenzy or made irrelevant).

Jonah Goldberg defends his vision of conservatism as a vocal anti-Trumper here (I suspect it is somewhat personal), towards the end of his podcast ‘The Remnant.’ In it, he explains why he resists the incomplete, and what he sees as incorrect, ‘neo-conservative‘ label (for him neo-conservatives bring the terminology, analysis and methods of the social sciences into conservatism while using them against Communist, Socialist, Marxist and other collectivist, rationalist enterprises).

He envisions paleo-cons as part of a more recent movement, pro-Trumpers as potentially misguided, and his platform of freer-market, more Hayekian conservatism as just as well-established and valid, or perhaps more valid than other competing visions.

It’s true that although no one individual nor faction likely possesses all of the truth, most individuals and factions believe they do, especially under the pressures of politics, opinion and influence. Political coalitions can bring such disparate groups together for awhile.

One major rift seems to be this:

Free Trade vs Economic Nationalism–

If you’re for open markets and free-trade, you likely don’t see too much long-term viability in trade-protectionism (union Left nor protectionist Right), because the forces at work are as relentless as they are transformative. There is little choice but to ride the waves of innovation, global competition and mobile labor, as the goal is to keep creating win-win scenarios, and keep building newer, better opportunities which engage people at their core talents and ambitions.

It is inefficient, backwards-thinking, and even perhaps politically dangerous, to react to the same waves by paying some people to keep rearranging the chairs inefficiently and creating incentives to use our political system for their personal and factional gains. The open-market approach doesn’t tend to make for ‘compassionate’ politics when people are hurting (deeply), but its best case seems to be that it can make for a politics of moral decency and local involvement by embracing this role, engaging a lot of who we are as people, not just what we do in the marketplace.

On the other hand, economic nationalism can also be a unifying force; a large island of possible agreement and common interest in a rapidly changing political and economic American landscape. This is much of what Donald Trump responded to in speech after speech as he toured the country (he also appealed to simply not being Hillary, attacking his opponent as he was attacked). The demographics are changing, and The Civil Rights movement, along with the extension of Civil Rights logic to more and more minority groups and individuals has continued apace, leading to much social transformation.

Freedoms have been extended to even those once legally denied such freedoms, and some people are finding themselves with different views, and different understanding of relationships they once held, even with their neighbors. I think it’s also true to say that many people driving these changes are also having to answer for some consequences of their ideals and behavior in action. Many radicals seek to change laws they call illegitimate, just as they often seek to control the institutions and lawmaking process they consider illegitimate, just as they seek to make their own laws based on universal claims, to rectify past injustices, and often not recognize opponents as anything but illegitimate (or evil). There is a lot of dependence, decadence, resentment and lack of freedom among many activists and radicals claiming freedom for all, despite the truths they have to tell.

How does economic nationalism fit it? I think Trump’s focus on jobs and border walls does, in fact, call some people from allegiance to their individual ‘class,’ ‘race’ and ‘gender’ categories to different purpose (away from identity politics and towards getting a job and serving the country). But I don’t think the appeal is that broad.

Economic nationalism also crystallizes a return to a promised pre-existing order, and I think it’s fair to say it certainly does give voice to people being tired of called rubes, racists and misogynists.

———–

Whatever your political stripes, then, I know I’m seeing a profound mistrust of most established institutions, authority and claims to authority right now. The extremes have often come to the middle, and the middle seems harder to find.

***As for the Democratic party, there is just as big a rift of populist, activist, and socially democratic progressivism within the base against older, establishment hawkish and more economically conservative establishmentarianism. The center seems sufficiently Left enough to have trouble winning working people back (though I could be wrong).

Here’s Trump giving a campaign speech in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania in October 2016 which has traditionally been a coal town, and is now trying to attract more and newer industries (Pennsylvania has traditionally been..traditional, with hard-work, patriotism and public service being profoundly important to most).

Heather MacDonald pits the goals of diversity and equality (pursued zealously within many an administrative hierarchy) against the quest for knowledge in the sciences. If you thought that begrudging respect for the sciences, or at least some basic understanding and neutrality were givens, you might want to think again.

I’m fairly certain that many people, in pursuit of their religious beliefs and in holding sacred the metaphysical doctrines which frame those beliefs, can and do bear hostility to the natural sciences, free-thinkers, and any challenge to those beliefs. The truth of such a statement seems self-evident.

But often in many educated circles, the ‘Grand Inquisitor‘ scene from the Brothers Karamazov seems to be playing on an endless loop, and all the darkness within the human heart, all the potential for stupidity, corruption, and incompetence within human organizations (the incredible difficulty of design and stability), is still directed against the Church (not the Mosque, of course) or some barely recognizable conception of authority.

Many current dangers are conveniently ignored, misunderstood, and/or tacitly supported under an umbrella of political idealism. Movements which support radical and revolutionary freedom tend to shift the beliefs and moral sentiments beneath the umbrella and within our institutions, but with little discussion of the costs involved.

Question the telos at the end of the rainbow, for which the umbrella will one day be shed, and all the old human problems return.

‘For Minogue, freedom led to “oppositionality,” a topic he explores in “The Conditions of Freedom and the Condition of Freedom.” Oppositionality is the idea that citizens may exercise an independent judgement on questions of their obligations that were once off-limits for discussion; everyone simply accepted them. Opposition and is seen both as a “disruptive and dynamic” part of freedom but also a threat to it – “fundamentally parasitic” on society and often praising dissent for its own sake.

This leads naturally to “The Modern Liberal’s Casebook,” which contains Minogue’s well-known comparison of liberalism to the legend of St George and the Dragon. In his telling, St. George didn’t know when to stop fighting battles and grew breathless in pursuit of smaller and smaller dragons, as big dragons were harder to come by. In this Minogue is quite correct. Taking his analogy further, there must come a time when dragons become extinct and younger versions of St. George are misguided into pursuing chickens and other desirable species instead.’

It also seems individuals tend to come in out and of belief, whatever their experiences, choices, genetic and biological proclivities, personal commitments and obligations, languages, cultures and social circles. This is to say nothing of basic self-interest. There are too many variables to count and I can’t proclaim to count nor understand them all (I doubt the social sciences can either, and I’m wary of the belief they can and/or should, at least in the context of popular culture).

I can say that trying to criticize and contextualize many modern and postmodern movements and thinkers seems a lonelier task at the moment, as is casting a skeptical eye upon many liberal political ideals currently reigning within many Western institutions.

Here’s another take, building upon an anti-Hegelian, pro-Kantian, pro-Popperian metaphysical platform:

‘Although Anglo-American philosophy tended to worship at the feet of science, the drift of academia to the left has led to characteristically totalitarian political attacks on science itself — this despite the leftist program to use “climate science” to impose a Sovietized command economy on energy and the tactic to smear climate skeptics, i.e. “Deniers,” through associaton with Creationism or Neo-Nazi Holocaust denial. None of that has stopped the “post-modern” move, which may even be called the “post-Copernican” move, where the “de-centering” of meaning and objectivity, returns the “marginalized” literary critic or theorist to the Ptolemaic center of the universe, whence modern science, now demystified and unmasked as an instrument of white, male, homophobic, Euro-centric oppression, had proudly thought to have dislodged an arrogant humanity. This has given new meaning to the words “obscurantism” and “sophistry.” Where the arrogance (let alone the intolerance and “extremism”) has settled now is all too plain to those familiar with American academic life, where a majority of American colleges have “speech codes” or equivalent regulations that openly violate the First Amendment.’

‘Overall, I would say that for libertarians Minogue’s book provides a litmus test. If you find yourself in vigorous agreement with everything he says, then you probably see no value in efforts to work with progressives to promote libertarian causes. The left is simply too dedicated to projects that Minogue argues undermine individual moral responsibility, and thus they are antithetical to liberty. On the other hand, if you believe that Minogue is too pessimistic about the outlook for freedom in today’s society and too traditional in his outlook on moral responsibility, then you would feel even more uneasy about an alliance with conservatives than about an alliance with progressives.’

About that last part, most libertarians tend to draw a ring around the individual and proceed accordingly, seeing unnecessary authoritarianism and systems of authority on both political Left and Right. I suspect most libertarians see this as some kind of moral failure or undue pessimism on the part of non-libertarian thinkers: Such thinkers are unwarranted in assuming something so deeply flawed about human nature. I mean, we’re not that bad. Most people can handle the freedom to make their own choices most of the time. Or at least, as many people as possible must be free to make their own mistakes and learn (or not) from them without such authority restricting voluntary choices.

Free-minds and free-markets are enough for many libertarians, while Minogue might see more flawed stuff: The desire to know one’s place in a hierarchy, the desire to define what one is by what one is not (it, them, they), the deep desire for security and regularity in daily life.

For my part, I tend to align with libertarians on a host of issues, especially against the Western Left, who, in my experience, can usually be found attacking and tearing-down traditional institutions (marriage, family, rule of law) and the obligations and duties they require of individuals (fidelity, working mostly for children & family, military service/jury duty). Such institutions and duties are seen as oppressive and morally illegitimate by the committed Leftist; worth protesting in peaceful, or overthrowing, in violent and radical fashion.

I often find myself asking the same old questions, with a contrarian spirit and from a position of deeper skepticism: With what are such institutions and duties to be replaced, exactly? How do you know your beliefs are true beliefs and accurate descriptions of the world?

Any injustice, unfairness, or genuine victim in Life is immediately requiring of moral concern and action by the Leftist. The injustice is identified, the cause amplified, and the victim placed into the ideologically preordained category, mobilizing individuals (temporarily recognized as such) for collective action on the road to presumed achievable ideal outcomes. You’ve probably heard it all before: Equality, Freedom, Peace are next…for ALL humanity as though any one person speaks for ALL of humanity.

Of course, mention the monstrous totalitarianism of Communist and revolutionary regimes (Soviet, North Korean, Cuban, Vietnamese, Venezuelan), for example, and you’re some kind of extremist. Point-out the many failures, injustices, and genuine victims of many rationalist economic policies and laws, or the potential logical inconsistencies found in much liberal and Western secular humanism (or any system, for that matter), and prepare to meet uncomfortable silence, scorn and derision.

Or worse.

Yet, a question rather simply and plainly presents itself: What to conserve?

The religious Right (universal claims to transcendent truth and earthly service found within God’s Plan, Family and Church) have plenty of well-documented and serious problems. There’s an inherent assumption that Man’s nature is so flawed as to require constant adherence to God’s laws. The universality and necessary enforcement of those laws must be undertaken and necessarily lead to redeemable suffering, some injustice and unfairness of their own.

If you fall outside this plan, prepare to eventually join the cause, or be damned.

In fact, there has been no shortage of short and long wars, schisms and all-too-earthly conflict. Earthly authority easily degenerates into petty and ruthless competition and abuse. The suffocation of truth and attack upon dissenters with different claims to knowledge are not rarities, and the inherent dullness and conformity of some devout believers comes as no surprise (often organizing against free-thinkers, naturalists, and opposing religious doctrines).

‘His definitions of the right and left partner well with Sowell’s analysis. In shortened form, Minogue’s name for the right is conservatism. He defines conservatism as caution in changing the structure of society based on an understanding that all change is likely to have unintended consequences. He calls the left radicalism, which covers most ambitious projects for changing the basic structure of state and society. Radicalism encompasses Fascism and Communism, popularly thought to be at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but understood by almost everyone as despotic. Radicalism views man as malleable.’

As previously posted, here’s Minogue on liberation theology, feminism, and other radical discontents. Rarely are ideas presented so clearly and well:

Here’s Thomas Sowell on his own thought, once a youthful and briefly committed Marxist (the kind of injustice American slavery imparted upon the mind, body and soul often led to radicalism of one kind or another). He ended up in a very different place:

‘I was struck by the parallels between the furious debates among artists in the early years of the revolution and those that raged during the Depression about the “correct” way to paint and the role of art in society—the assumption being that an indubitably correct answer was there to be found, as if there could not be many mansions in art, as if appreciation of one style automatically precluded admiration for another. The debates were highly ideological: in the Russian case, about what activity truly served the revolution and the proletariat (itself an abstraction, very different from workers’ actual lives); and in the American case, about what activity was truly American.’

To be flippant, as previously posted on this site: A little piece I like to call ‘Stalin’s Fingers’ in Seattle. Comic and graphic art may be taking up some of the muscularity of socialist realism and public-works solidarity.

Fun fact: During times of stress, Josef Stalin is said to have marched his fingers just so across his desk, transgressing his own boundaries!

You might have noticed those tiles already look a little drab and dated, even though construction only finished a few years ago.

More here on the piece (apologies to all comic/graphic artists ahead of time, for not portraying your craft with as much fidelity as it probably deserves).

Our muraliste is a comic/graphic artist tapped to make signs and symbols for all the Community:

‘Forney, originally from Philadelphia…landed the light rail station gig back in 2008 after submitting a series of paintings of hands in provocative positions to Sound Transit — paintings which had originally been featured in the 2007 Seattle Erotic Art Festival. The series was called Big Fuckin’ Hands.’

‘In a wide-ranging and candid interview with New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio casually noted that the “way our legal system is structured to favor private property” provokes his “anger, which is visceral.”

‘Bill de Blasio, then 26, went to Nicaragua to help distribute food and medicine in the middle of a war between left and right. But he returned with something else entirely: a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government.

and:

‘His activism did not stop. In the cramped Lower Manhattan headquarters of the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, where he volunteered, Mr. de Blasio learned to cause a stir. He and a ragtag team of peace activists, Democrats, Marxists and anarchists attempted to bring attention to a Central American cause that, after the Sandinistas lost power in a 1990 election, was fading from public view. “The Nicaraguan struggle is our struggle,” said a poster designed by the group’

How do you balance interests in liberty, libertarianism, war and military technology, government, the sciences, sci-fi, artistic creativity, along with much insight and wisdom into human nature? And pretty good writing?

Libertarianism can be accompanied by attendant utopianism and grand visions of the future (as strong as the progressive and collectivist love of technocracy). Yet, as for predictions about the future, here’s Pournelle describing his own home computer and how publishing might look in a few decades time.

‘Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.’

‘The events of the long struggle in the Soviet Union between the despots and the “dissidents,” in which Andrei Sakharov played such a great role,were well described in hisMemoirs,which appeared in English in 1990, andin the accounts of his valiant wife, Elena Bonner. But here we have the other side of the story: the long secret records kept by the KGB and submitted to the state and party leadership. And these documents are skillfully put into the larger context by an extensive and useful introduction by Joshua Rubenstein.’

and:

‘Another large misapprehension about the nature of the Soviet and similar regimes was that the “planned economy” meant something real. There was also, among progressives in the West, the idea that the “bourgeoisie” were a natural enemy of the forward-looking, adolescent intelligentsia, and that the “capitalists” were the natural enemies. There is a historical context for these sinister myths. British ambassadors to Russia in the late eighteenth century had noted that entrepreneurs had to seek the quick ruble because at any moment the state might confiscate their investments. And at the opposite pole of Russian society, the peasantry was fixed on the need todeceive the authorities to whom they were subservient—up to, and provoking,violent rural risings.’

As previously posted:

Ha!:

“Those teach who can’t do” runs the dictum,

But for some even that’s out of reach:

They can’t even teach—so they’ve picked ’em

To teach other people to teach.

Then alas for the next generation,

For the pots fairly crackle with thorn.

Where psychology meets education

A terrible bullshit is born.’

Many people still can’t handle how bad Communism was on the ground, and fewer these days are looking to keep the ideology up in the air, partly thanks to Conquest and his labors: